Education Commons^™

The Upstream Sources Of Bias: Investigating Theory, Design, And Methods Shaping Adaptive Learning Systems, Shamya Chodumada Karumbaiah

Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations

Adaptive systems in education need to ensure population validity to meet the needs of all students for an equitable outcome. Recent research highlights how these systems encode societal biases leading to discriminatory behaviors towards specific student subpopulations. However, the focus has mostly been on investigating bias in predictive modeling, particularly its downstream stages like model development and evaluation. My dissertation work hypothesizes that the upstream sources (i.e., theory, design, training data collection method) in the development of adaptive systems also contribute to the bias in these systems, highlighting the need for a nuanced approach to conducting fairness research. By empirically …

Teacher Education For Racial Knowledge: Institutional And Pedagogical Challenges For Developing Racial Knowledge, Lisette Nnenna Enumah

Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations

This qualitative study explored the practices of teacher educators (TEs) who teach about race and racism. Through interviews, focus groups, and artifacts from teaching, TEs reflected on their teaching goals, pedagogical practice, and successes and challenges in teaching for racial knowledge. Three key findings emerged. First, I examined tensions that emerged for TEs who teach about White supremacy from within White supremacist institutions. Drawing primarily from Mills’ (1994, 1999, 2015) and Leonardo’s (2004) theoretical constructions of White supremacy, I proposed a framework for the logic of White supremacy and used this logic to analyze the emergent tensions identified by TEs …

Intentions Lost In Translation: An Ethnographic Examination Of Recognition Of Adolescent Cultural Capital, Rita Harvey

Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations

Cultural capital is largely conceptualized as high-status (or “dominant”) knowledge and practices that yield a return or benefit for those who enact these forms of capital. Literature in this field has produced a rich understanding of how cultural capital is transferred from one generation to the next, yet there is little understanding of the micro-interactions in which gatekeepers recognize and acknowledge these forms of cultural capital. This dissertation project aims to deepen our understanding of cultural capital through an investigation of the micro-interactional moments in which gatekeepers “read” adolescent cultural capital “bids”. Situated in the context of the educational experiences …

Diverging Paths: Three Essays On The Transitions Of Working-Class Young People In South Korea, Hyejeong Jo

Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations

Despite the egalitarian ideal of “college-for-all,” research shows that working-class young people remain disadvantaged in the transition to college and work. However, while some experience upward mobility, most go to work. Yet, scholars have paid scant attention to these variant pathways to adulthood within the working-class young individuals. Particularly, they have not fully recognized varying roles that teachers play in the transition of working-class students to college and work. Moreover, working-class young people’s understanding of the transition to adulthood has been discussed only insufficiently in the literature. Therefore, this dissertation, consist of three independent but complementary essays, investigates various transitional …

Supply-Side Education: Race, Inequality, And The Rise Of The Punitive Education State, Daniel Stephen Moak

Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations

The 1930s were dominated by an understanding that unemployment and inequality were primarily the result of structural failures of the market economy. However, the unraveling of New Deal liberalism throughout the 1940s and 1950s shifted ideological understandings of problems like unemployment, poverty and racial inequality to explanations focused on individual deficiencies. This development had dramatic consequences for federal education policy. Buttressed by a coalition of civil rights groups and educational organizations pushing for federal involvement in education, Democratic policymakers turned towards education as a cheaper and more effective replacement to earlier redistributive taxation and full employment policies. The success of …

Culturally Responsive Computing For American Indian Youth: Making Activities With Electronic Textiles In The Native Studies Classroom, Kristin Anne Searle

Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations

By providing access to hands-on activities and the physical and digital tools necessary to complete them, maker activities encourage cross-disciplinary, interest-driven learning and problem solving in schools. However, maker movement efforts to broaden participation into computer science have largely ignored Indigenous populations. In this dissertation, I examine how electronic textiles (e-textiles) materials connects to the heritage craft practices found in many Indigenous communities. By design, e-textiles materials combine low-tech craft practices like sewing with high-tech engineering and programming. Framing learning computing within these two distinct but overlapping cultural contexts provides youth will a familiar context in which to learn something …

Teaching Well-Being Increases Academic Performance: Evidence From Bhutan, Mexico, And Peru, Alejandro Adler

Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations

Can well-being be taught at a large scale, and should it be taught in schools? Does teaching well-being improve academic performance? In Study 1, 18 secondary schools (n=8,385 students) in Bhutan were randomly assigned to a treatment group (k=11) or a control group (k=7). The treatment schools received an intervention targeting ten non-academic well-being skills. Study 2 was a replication study at a larger scale in 70 secondary schools (m = 68,762 students) in Mexico. The schools were randomly assigned to a treatment group (j = 35) or a control group (j = 35). Study 3 was the last replication …

Vulnerability, Trust And The Accompaniment Of Educational Development In Nicaragua, Matthew James Tarditi

Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations

Asymmetrical power relations, imposition and hierarchy characterize much of the field of development. Design and decisions are often dominated by the few as programs determine what is best for the local communities they seek to assist (Cooke & Kothari, 2001). The multiply wounded nation of Nicaragua is no exception to the norm, and the country has a long history of outside intervention by non-governmental and governmental organizations seeking to distribute materials or empower communities. Originally founded through a partnership between the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education and a Nicaragua Corporate Social Responsibility Division, the Digital Seeds Program strives …

Development, Value, And Education In India's Digital Age, Arjun Shankar

Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations

This ethnography is an attempt to show the particular relationships between globalization, development, digitality, and urban-rural change as they are re-articulated in the actions and interactions between several groups – NGO personnel, teachers, students – living, working, and studying within educational spaces in South Karnataka, in regions in and around Bangalore city. My intervention, to put it simply, is to show how the condition of development in India, and specifically education-as-development, has changed in the contemporary global digital moment, and I identify the new concerns of each of these groups – how they sought to develop themselves and Others – …

Never Been: An Exploration Of The Influence Of Dis/Ability, Giftedness, And Incarceration On Adolescents In Adult Correctional Facilities, Kelsey Marie Jones

Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations

This dissertation study explores the experiences of incarcerated youth, specifically the relationships between dis/ability (Baglieri& Knopf, 2004), giftedness, and incarceration in the lives of these young people. The extant literature rarely addresses these relationships through the voices of young people who have experienced incarceration first-hand; furthermore, the research pathologizes incarcerated youth and removes the challenges they encounter from their systemically oppressive contexts. This research places the unique experiences of the participants in the larger conversations of deficit-thinking, racism, ecological systems and theories of critical praxisâ??specifically, through the lenses of Dis/ability Studies in Education and Critical Race Theory.

As a qualitative …

The Sociomateriality Of Expertise: An Exploratory Study Of Trauma Surgeons, Darin Rowell

Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations

The importance of knowledge workers and expertise continues to accelerate for both organizations and for economies. In addition, experts are increasingly being tasked with contributing to challenges that span their particular domain of expertise. A contemporary example is the U.S. healthcare industry where physicians are increasingly being asked to serve as active partners with healthcare administrators to solve complex challenges such as rising costs, outcome-based reimbursements, and quality of care. Unfortunately, research has shown that individuals who are highly skilled in one domain (e.g., physicians) are rarely are able to transfer that expertise to other domains. This dissertation used qualitative …

Establishing Peace And Conflict Studies Programs In Iraqi Universities: Necessary Conditions And Short-Term Implications, Thomas Eugene Hill

Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations

ABSTRACT

Establishing Peace and Conflict Studies Programs in Iraqi Universities:

Necessary Conditions and Short-Term Implications

Peace and Conflict Studies was unknown as a field of academic inquiry in Iraq when the 21st century began. Just over a decade later, formal institutional entities had been established to explore the subject at three Iraqi universities. Using a participatory action research methodology, this dissertation explores two questions: 1. What are the conditions that promote or impede establishment of a university-based program in peace and conflict studies in Iraq?, and; 2. Once established, what are possible outputs and outcomes of these programs over the …

Influences On Children's Human Capital In Rural Malawi, Shirley Afua Appiah-Yeboah

Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations

The circumstances that characterize poor, rural communities in Malawi suggest that children's health-wealth gradient can vary from other settings. This dissertation begins with a description of the methods used to create a household wealth variable using assets data in the Malawi Longitudinal Study of Families and Health project. By using a fixed effects model to minimize omitted variable bias, I determine the influence of participating in a farm subsidy program on the levels of household wealth in 2004, 2006 and 2008. The results show that the program is positively associated with the wealth index score and this association is stronger …

Raising Race Questions: Whiteness, Education And Inquiry In Seven Teacher Case Studies, Ali Michael

Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations

Race matters in schools. In addition to the highly publicized racialized achievement gap, race has historically determined who can access education and what kind of education people receive. Additionally, teachers and students bring racial identities to school that impact how they relate to one another, to the school community and to the curriculum. Finally, schools are places where race gets constructed. This study uses qualitative and action research methods to do research with teachers—rather than on teachers—as they learn about how and why race matters in education—and what that means for their classrooms. Because 85% of the K–12 teaching force …

Evaluating Preschoolers’ Comprehension Of Educational Television: The Role Of Viewer Characteristics, Stimuli Features, And Contextual Expectations, Jessica T. Piotrowski

Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations

This study represents the first experimental investigation to simultaneously evaluate the impact of three key areas of a child’s television viewing experience -individual differences (story schema), the stimulus (narrative type), and the environment (perceived demand characteristics). Guided by the capacity model (Fisch, 2000, 2004), preschoolers’ comprehension of an educational television program was evaluated in a 2 (story schema: low, high) x 2 (perceived demand characteristics: fun (low), learning (high)) x 2 (narrative type: participatory cues absent, participatory cues present) between-subjects fully crossed factorial experiment. Comprehension was operationalized as both narrative (i.e. central, incidental, and inferential comprehension) and educational content comprehension. …

Embracing Complexity: A Reflective Investigation Of Cultural Transformation Through Experiential Learning, Joshua Yarden

Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations

Educational settings are microcosms of the communities and the societies in which they exist, where educators play a role in preparing young people for activity in the public sphere. Educational settings are not removed from the arenas of power relationships. Social reproduction theorists have demonstrated how unchallenged preconceived notions are inadvertently reinforced and reproduced in schools, which in some cases reinforce stratification and the dominance of the powerful interests prevalent in the surrounding society. This action-oriented conceptual study is an examination of the dynamic complexity of cultural transmission and transformation. It is an investigation of the assumption that human agency …

The Writing Exam As Index Of Policy, Curriculum, And Assessment: An Academic Literacies Perspective On High Stakes Testing In An American University, Jennifer Maria Freeman

Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations

Academic literacy is a policy goal universities implement through curricular and assessment decisions that are generally discipline-based. Disciplinary genres are traditionally seen as relatively fixed entities, easily evaluated by practiced members of the field and able to be emulated and mastered by students with training. This study examines the interplay of policy, curriculum, and assessment as they concern academic literacy in higher education and explore how writing assessment is employed in the maintenance and verification of academic literacy. The research took place at a small university known primarily for its pharmacy school and preparation for careers in the sciences and …